Assignment 1 Hardware constraints AI Engines and Boids flocking

   

Hardware Constraints AI Engines 

The first point on this second section of this assignment that I will talk about is hardware constraints about the developers and what they have to think about, such as the time it will take to create the game and player experience.  I will also be talking about the player and looking at this from a developer’s point of view. They keep in mind the player experience and try to push this to the limits to make the game as much fun as possible, but they also have to keep in mind the time aspect. They can delay the release of a games if they think it is necessary to get the best level of player experience. An example of pushing player experience to the limit is AC Black Flag when developers tried to get the best player experience on PS3, but certain things didn't work out as it had limitations. They, therefore, decided to make a version of it on the new console the PS4, as it could cope much better with the lighting, realistic shadows and realistic interaction between the player and the environment such as brushing passed bushes.  So the advantages of this is that playing a game that requires a decent spec PC or console will increase the player experience and immersion because the graphic will look sharper and the whole experience will be much better, on the other hand if you try to play a game that requires a high spec PC or console on a low spec PC or console you won't get much gameplay time if any and it could crash or look like a slideshow and this will ruin the player experience and this means that no immersion will be created.                            

Boids Flocking 

The next point is boids flocking which is a type of algorithm used for artificial intelligence created by Craig Reynolds in 1986 (Reynolds,1987) . This is supposed to simulate the flocking behaviour of birds and the name Boid is a shortened version of bird-oid object, which just means bird like objects (Banks, 2007).  This program is also considered an example of emergent behaviour with three simple rules which are separation, alignment and cohesion. These apply to the simplest form of boids flocking (Hartman, 2006-2007).  This algorithm was first used in the video game Half-Life which came out in 1998 (Min, 2011)  and it was used for the bird like creatures.  It has also been used in movies such as Batman Returns (1992) for the bat-like swam (Bajec, 2009).  It doesn't just have to be used for birds flocking it can be used for things like bacteria, fish and even people as it simulates crowds where the people avoid each other by separating and then aligning to come back together.  The advantage of this is that it can create crowds of people or animals and this can really help to make a game feel more realistic and create immersion.  The disadvantage can be that in some games the player may feel crowded by people or animals and this can also block the players movements and frustrate the player.   

(nicksainz.com, 2017)

(phaser, 2016)